Paleoconservative Observations

Like anyone who observes the world, sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong, and often I’m not sure. I try to always learn, gather information, and make as much sense as I can. That said, I have put a lot of energy into both politics and being an armchair sociologist over the years and am encouraged by those times when I get it right.

I was never more right and endured more abuse than in my enthusiasm for and predictions regarding the likely success of Trump, both electorally and as President. On the whole, I’ve not been disappointed. Below are some thoughts I had as the events unfolded, as well as more abstract ones about why his deviation from “True Conservatism” as expressed by places like the National Review and the Weekly Standard makes sense as a more authentic expression of conservatism.

Trump’s appeal comes down to a few things, but more than anything else, its source is his refusal to speak in the idiom of the ruling class, and his willingness to speak to the Republican base about things they have repeatedly expressed concern about, which the mainstream leaders pay some minimal lip service too, and then forget as soon as they’re elected. We hate political correctness, are concerned about the third world reengineering of America’s people, and think the ruling class could care less about our economic prospects.

[A] revamped Republican party should trend nationalistic, abandoning its ideology of free trade, militarism, and uncritical support of big business, in favor of a genuine concern for the working, productive classes who face predations from a motley crew of the super poor, the super rich, idiotic campaigns of nation building abroad, and hostile newcomers at home. If not the GOP, then a new party might fill this space. The GOP appears finished if it follows the idiotic counsel [of moderation] coming from the RNC’s pathologists.

His style, far from being a liability, is part of his appeal to the put-upon people of Middle America, who felt particularly beleaguered during the Obama years:

[H]is style is part of the message. It translates into how we would expect a President Trump to deal with the media and Washington elite’s neverending campaign of shaming language, trying to force leaders to compromise on core beliefs. Bush the elder succumbed and violated his “no new taxes” pledge, the McCains of the world have shown this on such varied issues as gay marriage and immigration, and we see it now with all of the candidates, save Trump, in their totally bizarre obeisance to Israel and its lobby, as if they were running for Mayor of Tel Aviv and not President of the United States.

Trump’s harsh tone and his failure to back down from it show a certain kind of strength that signals immunity from the usual Stockholm syndrome we can expect of any American president. In other words, he may be appear a bully, but he’s not; he’s more like a bodyguard, fighting the various bullies and charlatans who have bullied the American people for two generations. His contempt for political correctness is bracing and a testament to the fragility of the current kultursmog, and that level of contempt for the usual pieties of our political culture is part of his appeal.

Having now failed definitively on Russian Collusion, the latest Trump Scandal is getting little traction, his alleged tete a tete (a decade or so ago) with the ridiculously buxom, Stormy Daniels. But most of his supporters are shrugging, and the reason is pretty plain that this was all baked in the cake. His love for the ladies, like Bill Clinton’s, was already widely known. We saw hints of all this when the Cruz affair rumors were rampant during the primaries.

Now that Rubio is gone, someone with an axe to grind got this to the National Enquirer, and here we are. It does matter if it’s true, particularly to Cruz’s supporters, because his alleged virtue is the raison d’etre of his campaign and the keystone of his message. Trump, by contrast, is anti-fragile to the usual attacks because he does not claim to be Mr. Virtue, his Christianity is toned down and nominal (like many Americans today, incidentally), and his whole schtick is that he does not play by the usual rules and is politically incorrect

While many conservatives today hearken back to Reagan, I think Trump’s man is Nixon. He was Trump’s president as Trump was starting out in business, and he won massively. On domestic policy, they are almost perfectly matched, and both mystify, annoy, and strike fear in the Ruling Class, broadly understood.

[Nixon] won massively against McGovern in ’72, but was hated by elites, who truly did not understand him and his appeal.

He governed from the center, angering free market types with his price controls during the inflation episodes of the early 70s and angering movement conservatives with his pragmatic approach to the Cold War. He enlisted he help of China for realpolitik reasons against the Soviet Union and rammed through a “peace treaty” to allow a swift withdrawal from the failing Vietnam War. He was something of a foreign policy minimalist, in contrast to the more grandiose fantasies of hardcore “movement conservative” Cold Warriors who wanted to risk nuclear war to roll back Soviet communism.

Nixon stood for a basic, somewhat authoritarian cultural conservatism, but was economically pragmatic and centrist, and made largely symbolic gestures against the growing disorder of the times.

It remains to be seen if the latest rapprochement with North Korea is a trick or will be a master stroke, like Nixon going to China. But one area where Trump has succeeded wildly so far is the economy with a mixture of Reaganite cutting of regulations and nationalism on trade. The anemic Obama recovery, which we all took for granted as “the way things are” has given way to real growth, particularly in the area of manufacturing and in places like the Midwest and rural America, which were consigned to oblivion by the elites of both parties.

I notice outside of DC, lots of conservatives are nationalistic and mildly protectionist. At the same time, Free Trade is an article of religious faith among economists and certain social classes, but it’s not clear how empirically supported it is. Indeed, much of economic “science” consists of a priori deductive reasoning based on hypothesis of how people behave and why they can be viewed artificially as mere consumers and not also as citizens, potential soldiers, countrymen, enemies, potential welfare cases, etc. At the most basic level, people are both producers and consumers. They need to earn and make wages to consume. So it matters if our consumption temporarily goes up while our productive capacity goes down.

We also face competition in other areas of life with our free trade partners, such as China, and may find we’ve built up their wealth only to empower their military expansion. It’s notable that the most vociferous supporters of free trade often work in jobs little impacted by global competition, or that are otherwise supported by substantial protections.

Romney is worrisome in this regard, as he appears to have the cosmopolitan businessman’s view of this. He also has the skills to be a potentially very useful president. I believe our president should behave like the CEO of Walmart, driving extremely hard bargains with all of our trading partners in order to benefit Americans as a whole. And we should hobble communist countries like China and slowly strangle them economically, as they are hostile nations. Their growth has done nothing to liberalize them and much to endanger us. At the same time, it has also done much to weaken us and impoverish our formerly high wage industrial workers.

Our nation is too important and the writing on the wall too apparent to allow the ill supported ideology of free trade to stop us from taking sensible measures to strengthen ourselves relative to our global competitors.

Trump’s electoral win, his success as President, and the devolution of checklist conservatism dominant for the last eight years all come from a common source: opposition to globalism, with which elites of both parties are complicit, and the explicit offering of the alternative of nationalism.

Nationalism is the truest conservative impulse today, just as the anti-socialism was in yesteryear. Conservatism is dynamic, because it is fundamentally an approach to change and an attempt to preserve or restore a known way of life. The threat then was Soviet Communism and a homogenizing welfare state at home, but the threat today is homogenizing multiculturalism, mass immigration, and unrestrained global trade. Changes along these axes form the core anxiety of Middle America, and this is the problem for which only candidate Donald Trump had any concern or antidote. Let us hope he remembers how he was elected and to what end.